The Satyricon

One of the funniest and yet render books ever written and thank for Arrowsmiths translation. Petronius was Nero's light hearted jester and this an excellent tale of the Roman Citizens life. Unlike Caesar's Conquest of Gaul...interesting reading because he wrote in the third person.. so you have, "And Caesar when out and took control of the battle." This one of the funniest books ever written. But refer to all foot notes you'll laugh harder.

The Satyricon is a true classic. The translation is accurate and flows very well. I recommend this to all readers interested in Latin literature.

Great for school

thanks

Used book was in much poorer condition then expected.

Rex Priapus

Package was delivered, but it was just an empty bag. Didn’t get the book at all.

The Satyricon has reached us in a particularly bad shape, but it is not the only ancient text that makes you wonder whether its author, if he could rise from the dead, would be able to identify his own work from the concoctions of modern scholarship! Often the archetype for our endeavor is already removed from the original script by many centuries, and who knows whether the authorÕs own script had been free of errors. Even on papyrus, to produce a manuscript was slow and costly. Before the invention of the codex, scrolls in some cases could be a heavy and cumbersome affair of 90 ft. in length and up to 30 pounds of weight. Once a column had disappeared in the interior of such scroll, the author would be very reluctant to go through the trouble of unscrolling, if he could help it. So for his cross-references he would rather trust his memory, and of course nobody even considered making an index, because for scrolled material it is practically useless. It makes only sense if you can go between single pages. Worst of all, we look at a book that in all likelihood had never been disseminated very widely. Most copies seem to have been private notes, taken from the text with little regard of context. Since it is a frank and unashamedly lewd text, most copyists, like naughty schoolboys, copied out only the juicy bits for God knows what use. This has saddled the modern reader with a collection of snippets in a very sorry condition, which under-represents the entire text by 90% and over-represents the sex in it by 100%. Of reportedly some 20 books, only portions of book 14, 15, and 16 have survived in loose snippets from all over Europe, but nobody has yet established an undisputed order for all the fragments. For all we know, prior to the surviving part, the story starts at Marseilles. The first person narrator Encolpius, for unknown reasons, had fallen foul of the god Priapus and goes on a quest to regain his errection. He may had been exiled from the city (after a years entertainment at public expense) or ran away from the plague, travels by sea to Italy and at some point is rescued from the gladiatorial arena in Rome. Freeloading and thieving, Encolpius moves down through Italy, until a Tarentine ship owner, Lichas, is attracted to him and picks him up. Encolpius however seduces LichaÕs wife and commits some terrible outrage on his benefactor in the porticus of Hercules at Baiae, a famous pleasure resort in south Italy. He also steals the robe and rattle of the goddess Isis from LichaÕs ship. About the same time, the famous courtesan Tryphaena becomes his mistress in a love triangle between him, her, and the handsome slave Giton. Grown jealous, Encolpius disgraces his mistress in public, and he and Giton gang up with another low life character, Ascyltus. The three are involved in the murder of a certain Lycurgus, rob his villa and saw up the proceeds in a ragged tunic. During a separation, perhaps while stealing an expensive cloak, Encolpius loses the garment with the stolen money inside. Mutual suspicions of dishonesty and jealousy over Giton shake up the trio, before it barges in into some secret Priapean rites conducted by the priestess Quartilla. Finally we find the three in Puteoli and associating as men of culture with a teacher of rhetoric, Agamemnon, who has a school there. It is here, when the surviving text opens in the middle of a discussion of the timeÕs rhetorical education. So, if the condition of the fragments is such a sorry affair, why bother at all? (For the lewd bits we certainly can substitute from our XXXX video stores.) Well, to begin with, the author obviously had been a linguistic genius with an ear for common peopleÕs speech-patterns, which in itself is highly unusual for PetroniusÕs time. For all we know, he seemed to have been an intimate member of the inner circle surrounding the emperor Nero. So all the more unusual, that such a man should care for the language in the streets. Nero together with his drinking companions, is reputed to have roamed the streets and taverns of the capital in dissolute sprees of mayhem, even after his coronation. Sometimes this got the teenage emperor in trouble with the law. If Petronius was a participant in these entertainments, he certainly had had ample opportunity for first hand observations on low life and indeed much of this material found its way into his novel. But it is an unusually rich presentation straddling the entire scale from the vulgar to the mockingly sublime, interspersed with poems and sometimes deliberately bad poetry, and with an uncanny eye for trifles and little sensations. Just notice how the eye follows a drifting bird feather, sinking down to the sea and floating there in narrow circles before being sucked under by the whirling pool of the little waves that dimple the surface - most unusual for practically the entire literature of the period, before and long after. An incredibly rich tapestry unfolds, of local customs, idiosyncratic character traits, the smells and gusto of real peopleÕs life. Tacitus reports, that PetroniusÕs involvement in PisoÕs conspiracy did force him to commit suicide in 65 Ad., but not before he spelled out his true feelings in a last letter to the Emperor. This is probably true. According to Roman custom the public reading of a deceasedÕs will was often used to settle old scores in a piece of unanswerable libel. Considering the enormous length of the novel, PetroniusÕs death may very well have left unfinished this product of a notorious night-owl. What had survived, has found in William Arrowsmith a very able translator - it is a hard act to do, and Arrowsmith gave us as good a rendition as can reasonably be expected.

Great book! Laughed our heads off through most of it.